This invention relates to remote telephone resetting of postage meters, remote resetting postage meter systems, and methods for remotely resetting postage meters, and more particularly to meters, systems and methods in which a central or host installation receives requests for resetting a user's meter and verifies the user's identity, and the amount available on deposit before securely authorizing the resetting of the user's meter by the requested amount.
Telephone postage meter resetting is known in the art. Techniques are known for enabling a postage meter user to have his or her meter reset with additional postage by telephone, avoiding the need to carry the meter to a postal authority for authorized resetting. In telephone postage resetting, the user calls the central installation. That installation debits the user's account and supplies the user with a combination that enables the user to introduce into the meter the correct amount of additional available postage.
In the prior art, attention has been given to routines for assuring that the caller is an authorized user before releasing the next of a predetermined number of combinations to the caller. A voice answerback unit has been suggested as the means of informing the caller to enable him or her to enter the combination learned by telephone. The meter could then be reset with a fixed additional increment of postage. Proposals have also been made for the use of a code-bearing means such as a card or a check that is read by a postage meter to enable the introduction of additional postage. Another security-related concern was that the amount of postage being introduced should be only that amount authorized at the central facility. For this purpose certain prior art taught that the combination communicated to the user from the central facility should be dependent upon the amount of postage requested so that a disparity in the authorized resetting amount and the requested amount would result in a disparity, or other incorrect relationship, in the combinations compared at the meter to enable resetting.
Verification that the amount of postage being added to the meter was that amount the user had requested of the central facility has been made at the postage meter rather than at the central facility. This was done by the meter's comparison of the combination that it had internally generated with the combination that the central facility had generated and sent to the site of the meter.
The need for the user to intervene between the meter and the central facility, to receive information from a voice answerback unit and to enter that information to the meter, e.g. by a keypad, introduces the likelihood of user error, requiring a new introduction of the information to the meter or a whole new resetting routine. It is also wasteful of the user's time to have the user stay on the telephone line until the information has been sent by the central facility, and then to touch into the keypad the requisite information.